14 June 2014

Jeezo

You could blow me down with a wren's feather. On Thursday afternoon, and with immense tentativeness, I asked if you could lend me a hand to keep the Peat fires burning all the way up to referendum day. I asked for £750. Within hours, in your marvellous kindness, consideration and generosity, the fund had already shot past that. As the balance stands, between donations and the Indiegogo campaign, you've contributed a startling £2,308.03 to the peat worrying kitty. I'm stunned.

The Indigogo campaign still has a month to run, but as you can imagine, I'm already pleased as punch. I am also tickled by the range of people who chipped in so generously, including many folk whose opposition to my constitutional politics I know are dyed in the wool and inveterate. This past week has been full of negative representations of the independence campaign as sour, divisive and uncomradely across the Yes/No divide. That's not my experience.

And like Alex Massie, I'm minded to credit these small, unremarked kindnesses and civilities more than the exaggerated folk devils and moral panics which have dominated the headlines this last week. Surveying the list of backers, I was also struck by the disproportionate number of women who contributed. I take particular heart from that.

All that remains is to thank wholeheartedly all of those who gave the funder a nudge, put your hands in your pocket, or who wished me well. It has made this a cheering, unexpectedly affirming kind of a week.

Uh, Andrew? Since you bust your target so impressively before I actually found my debit card, would you mind awfully if I added my intended donation to you to Paul Kavanagh's fundraiser instead? You know what they say about it being the thought that counts and all that....

“I think of him more of a long nosed, elegantly coiffed Afghan pawing through his leather bound library whilst disdainfully inhaling a puddle of Armagnac in an immense crystal snifter. If he can also lift his leg over his shoulder and lick his balls...” ~ Conan the Librarian™

“... the erudite and loquacious Peat Worrier who never knowingly avoids a prolix circumlocution.” ~Love and Garbage

“My initial mind picture was of a scanty bikini'd individual wallowing in a bath tub of peat. However I've since learned to warm to him, and like peat he's slow to draw but quick to heat...” ~Crinkly & Ragged Arsed Philosophers

Definition: "to worry peat" v.

"Peat worrying" is the little known or understood process for the extraction of cultural peat, practised primarily in the Lowlands of Scotland by aspirant urban rustics. Primary implements by means of which successful "worrying" is achieved include the traditional oxter-flaughter but also the sharp-edged kailyard and the innovative skirlie stramasher.